ASUS O!Play AIR HDP-R3

The "old" one has several wifi driver modules but they're all obscure Asus ones like those special wi-fi addon cards they used to have for their motherboards. Possibly they were planning a built-in wi-fi utilizing their existing technology but didn't do it on this model. There's certainly the possibility to add USB wireless, there's no technical reason not to, and it's something a skilled user could do themselves if they compile a kernel module. Provided the CPU can handle it, of course.

I've heard USB/WiFi bridges work great with the ASUS.

You got a source? I'm very curious...

If these things can't atleast passthru dts-hd and dolby tru-hd , no point is getting them...

If it's anything like their HDP-R1 (which I own) I can tell you to stay REALLY far away from it. Check out the ASUS support forums. Actually, let's just call them the ASUS user forums cause ASUS isn't doing much supporting there. Very disappointed with that device.

I'm very happy with my O!play like many users are so take what you read online with a pinch of salt. Also to confirm it works fine with a wifi bridge (I use DD-WRT in bridge mode) with the warning that alot will depend on your range and signal quality. I've setup with G so hidef won't play well but thats a bandwidth limitation of my router not the O!play.

Here's a video of this machine. Looks interesting.

http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/26401488

I have a Free Agent Theater +, a WDTV Live and this will be my third when it comes out sometimes in January.

I've got the HDP-R1 and am quite pleased with it so far, a few annoyances but none that I can't live with (so far) and the new 1.17 firmware made it even better. Just downloading the last of a m2ts file so I'll see how it does with that later.

I just ordered the WDTV live, which should be here in the new week. I was really on the fence on what to get for my 2nd unit, seriously considering the Patriot because of its drive bay, and the Lacie Lacinema with its built in 1TB drive. Boxing day deals and an additional 15% off from newegg/paypal made me go with the WDTV Live, I was really wanting the Lacie unit but it was too much scratch for now.

Now the new Asus is out, and it's a strong contender for my 3rd unit because of its wireless N capability. For my other sets running ethernet is no big deal, so the wireless was a not really necessary nice to have, but it would be nice to have wireless for one unit. Thing is I would then have to upgrade my router, and I decided to forgo the linksys unit on sale for $99 at newegg on my order.

It'll be a while before I pick up a 3rd unit, and its nice to see all this choice now, making me quite glad I didn't fork out $300+ for a very restrictive d-link unit a year or so ago. The Lacie is still a strong contender with its 1TB drive, so is the Patriot with its drive bay, both able to increase my NAS capacity. I'll see how the WDTV performs when I get it, and maybe play with some of the firmware hacks on both the WDTV and HDP-R1, I may even try the Asus unit with one of my dd-wrt routers set up as a bridge to see how it does.

Any info on when this will be generally released? On-line retailers still show it as "pre-ordered" yet it already starts to show up on eBay for a price premium.

kinemax, take another look I have seen it at the two online stores I do most of my shopping at.

Just use the Linksys 54G()router. Plug the ethernet cable into the router ( with special free firmware). Works fine. Still prefer wired. Wireless is fine for lower resolution stuff.

philip

So...

1. Anyone else watching 720p and 1080p HD movies over Wireless G?

2. Can the HDP-R3 output TrueHD and DTS-Master bitstream over HDMI? What about LPCM?

Any user feedback/review of this unit? The sole customer review on Amazon is not positive.

So there were concerns with video quality not being as good as the WDTV Live for the gen 1 Asus player. Another poster indicated that the Gen 2 inside was the same as the Gen 1 with the exception of added media reader plsu wifi. Can anyone give some feedback on the video quality of the new Asus with WDTV Live? Any users with both?

1. If the wireless G signal is good, 720P is OK. 1080P, NO.

Interesting. I have come across many users with the same result as yours, no 1080p content over Wireless G. I must be really lucky and getting the max out of the Wireless G router here.

I get 9MB/sec (72Mb/sec) sustained reliable continuous rate streaming DVD movies to my new 802.11n system going from my PC at 5GHz, to the router, then to the laptop at 2.4GHz. All channels are set to 300Mb/sec link.

For the upgrade, I disabled the old legacy AT&T U-Verse "G" wireless router. (Why can't I just get an internet connection without them forcing their inferior gear on me? Answer: because they don't want consumers to set up their own network to watch movies outside of cable!).

Furthermore Netgear A/C Powerline products may advertise 200Mb/sec but only deliver 15-20Mb/sec. Worthless

Here is the first phase of my system:
Netgear RangeMax Simultaneous Dual Band Wireless-N Gigabit Router (WNDR3700)
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/compo...ess/Itemid,200
For my 802.11g based laptop I upgraded to the bargain Monoprice n card:
http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2
For my home based PC's (with USB ports located on the front top for better reception) I upgraded to the bargin AirLink101 AWLL7025 Dual Band Wireless 300N USB Adapter. Note I tested the dual band $75 Linksys USB and got the same 9MB/sec speed.
http://www.amazon.com/AirLink101-AWL...2&sr=8-1-spell

Next up will be the (initially one) Asus R3 with myself adding local 1TB storage using its eSata port (not the inferior USB 2.0). Latest manual and firmware:
ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/Digit...Player/HDP-R3/

No $$$ NAS products or Intel CPU's needed! Since I administer/control the files no DRM is involved either. Ponder all the corporations who hate these thoughts.

So anyone else have feedback on the WDTV Live versus Asus Air?

Will have the R3 in my hands in a day or so from NewEgg. Will do some side by side with my WDTV unit and full HTPC on Panny Plasma. Wireless (G)stream of .mkv 1080 material. I dont store any raw BluRay rips - too much space - so the wireless performance might not answer everyones questions.


Hope to put a nice little review together for others..

Looking forward to it! Post back here please.

Asus O!Play AIr (R3) review:

So far I'm not impressed at all. It's reporting 11000 transfer rates on the O!play over wireless N and I still can't get my 1080p movies to play back smoothly over wireless. The interface for folders over a network is horrid. I haven't tried Upnp yet. The worst part is how unresponsive the remote is. It's like a joke. You have to push the buttons six times before anything happens (this only happens when a movie is playing). I can't find any way to turn off subtitles. Fastforward and rewind are both very glitchy. I'm going to update the firmware on it (it already has the second most recent version) to see if it helps. If it doesn't fix the remote issues I'm returning it and buying a WDTV Live.

Does anyone know if the Asus USB-N13 adapter will work with the WDTV Live?

Asus USB-N13 802.11n Network Adapter is based on the Ralink RT2870 series chipset.

Edit: I've used it for maybe 3 hours and it has hard-locked on me once already requiring a powercycle.

Edit #2: The O!PLay has NOT been tested with windows 7. The sharing actually requires editing your registry in windows or updating the O!Play to the latest firmware which you can only do from a usb key. The documentation for the O!Play and the Asus support forums are equally pathetic. The O!play is so bad I may also return my Asus router I just bought.

Setup:
OPlay, HTPC and WDTV connected via. HDMI to Panny Plasma 1080p TV.

Material:
1080p.mkv material wireless on O!Play wired on WDTV
1080p.iso material wireless on O!Play wired on WDTV
1080p.ts materail wired (direct BluRay rips) on O!Play wired on WDTV

Network: Linksys WRT54G wireless

Media Storage: Windows Home Server (4TB storage)

Wireless Functionality: O!Play only.
O!Play wireless option and .iso and DVD menu support was the reason I bought this unit.

The wireless setup was easy, select the wireless network, enter the WEP key, restart the unit. Done. I know many a people are complaining they cannot get their wireless to function - maybe I got lucky. Again I may have gotten lucky, lots of folks are pissed they can not get this to work. Granted the WRT is the gold standard for ease of use and functionality.

I can stream 1080p.mkv and .iso material over the wireless network without issue. These are conversion with a file size of 9G max. No hiccups, no sync issues, everything looks great over wireless. Note: 98% of my movie collection is DIVX, iso and mkv material. I only kept a few BluRay rips whole for testing. You CANNOT playback 1080p native material over this wireless unit without some studders etc. I tried, its not pretty.

Picture Quality: O!Play, WDTV and HTPC

HTPC wins. Period. Better codecs, better processor, better video card. To be expected. $800.00 DIY HTPC. nvidia 9400 series video processor. e6850 intel dual core chip. 4G ram. Windows 7 Pro. This win is marginal, but even I can see a slight difference in picture clarity. I freeze framed Zombieland with a closeup of Woodys face during the highway intial encounter with Columbus on all 3 devices and swithed the HDMI input to compare. This is where I see the clarity greater on my HTPC. For $800 it should be.

WDTV v. O!Play
I honestly can't tell the difference. I played the same material from 2 network copies at the same time and switched from one HDMI source to the next. mkv, iso and .ts native all looked fantastic! Maybe a videophile of greater caliper than I can see a difference, I cannot. This would not be a deal make or break for me.

Interface:O!Play v. WDTV v. MediaPortal HTPC

MediaPortal wins. Though you wont PNP a MediaPortal installation, you will love it once its up and running.

O!Play seems more polished and with more setup options. New firmware offers a more crisp text fonts and the ability to create short cuts to your favorite network location so you dont have to drill down to say your XVID TV SHOWS folder etc.
WDTV factory firmware - not the mods - is simple, functional but not very impressive. I give O!Play the win here.
Side note. WDTV's network setup and functionality is pretty sad compared to the O!Play.

Conclusion:
If I had it to do over again, I would not have bought the WDTV - I actually own 2, one with the network option and the earlier version without. ASUS has a really promising player here and if they keep up with the firmware revisions to address users needs and complaints they may win this one. WDTV better keep their act together or they will lose market share to this device. It says a lot about WDTV that the modders are doing more with this unit to keep it current than WD is. For crap sake WDTV, its 2010, not having on onboard wireless network option is ridiculous.

Its not fair to compare these devices to a dedicated HTPC, but I have one so why not?

On another note, some promising work is being done to allow XBMC run from a thumb drive on the O!Play. If that works out, it's over for WDTV in the tweaker arena.

Hope this helps.

Kevin

RE AlienAgenda (Kevin)

I don't know how you can consider the O!play Air superior to the WDTV Live. The remote issue alone is enough to make me want to return it. I have to push every button 5 times before anything will happen (during playback). I just updated to 1.06N (latest firmware) and it didn't help at all. I can buy a wireless N adapter for the wdtv live but I cant buy a different remote for the O!play air. I also cant get the thing to play 1080p wireless without constant freezing. I'll try wep instead of WPA to see if it helps but I doubt it will.

The remote issue is ridiculous and I am NOT the only one. Half the people on the asus support forum are bitching about it.

Pastuch: I just picked up an HDP-R3 and it's been great. The remote is snappy and responsive. Have you got a clear line of site to the HDP-R3 unit itself? Are you sure your batteries are fully charged? A lot of others are mentioning the remote issue, you may have just gotten a bad one.

To test it, I immediately threw an 11.2GB .MKV file at it. There were some minor stutters on wireless... Smaller (6.2GB, 1.0GB) files worked flawlessly.

Plugged into a gigabit port on my router, the HDP-R3 didn't flinch. It'd be nice to set a favourite to a direct folder but I don't mind 10 seconds of clicking around a menu system for 2 hours of movie watching. (Maybe I just haven't figured out how to do this yet). I ended up paying $144CDN for it, completely happy with it.

I got mine at Canadacomputers in Ottawa. I paid the same price you did. The remote is less than 3 feet from the O!play. There is nothing impeding line of site. THe remote works ok (but not great) until I start playing a 10gb 1080p mkv file. Then everything goes to ****. Skipping, stuttering, remote doesn't work at all. This is coming from an 18000 connection to an Asus wireless N router. I'm returning it tomorrow and buying a WDTV live and a wireless N adapter.

I recently bought one myself and I am enjoying it so far. There are a few issues that need to be fixed such as the remote responsiveness issue, but overall I am really liking it. The UPNP feature is great. I setup a upnp server on my Foobar using foo_upnp and now I can browse my foobar playlists from my living room. The cool thing about it is that since Foobar is doing the playback, it allows me to stream stuff that the O!play normally doesn't support like internet radios.

I don't understand why people are saying that the registry needs to be edited to get the shares to work on Windows 7. I didn't have to do any of that on my end. All I had to do was share the folder and grant proper permissions/security (security tab) to the Everyone profile. I also have password protected sharing set to Off, but it was already like that to begin with.

I have both an O!Play and an O!Play Air and had a WDTV Live for months. They are all good for the price, but the O!Play Air is better for me than the WDTV Live. The wireless part of the Air connects fine to my Apple Airport Express Base Station at N speeds (only at 2.4GHz unfortunately). It easily streams 720p files and subtitle support is great. I also have it connected in a wired way and that is my preferred method until the remote issue gets fixed. The WDTV Live has poor subtitle support, expensive and iffy wireless addons and I don't need the internet sites that it supports (which is nice if you want that). The WDTV Live exports volumes to desktops which is really handy for file transfers. PQ is the same for both, though not as good as XBMC on my Mac Mini.

I'd have to give the nod to the normal O!Play if wireless is not important and to the Air if one thinks you will need it at some point. Wireless really isn't the way to go for streaming 1080p stuff encoded at a very high bitrate but is more than adequate for most people. It's way better than the G standard that I used with other players.

Not an easy choice. If subtitles matter then the WDTV Live is just not reliable.

philip

What is the matter with the WDTV Live's subtitles?